Rink in north Las Vegas

[AgnesNitt]

I stayed in the Rancho Fiesta in Vegas this week so I could skate on its ice rink.  It's close to the facility where I was teaching.

I didn't get on the ice

3/4 sheet.
Rough ice.
Public had no center marked.
Kids with the big plastic frames all over the place.

The hotel/casino was a bit of a smoke filled hole too. It was a very typical low rent Vegas hotel. Soda's  in the machine are $1.50 but they won't give change for $2. Staff was perfectly nice, and the rooms were fine (all the TV channels were the low rent ones--NO HBO!--because you're not supposed to stay in  your room in Vegas. I lived there, I'm not  enamored of the town)

There's a decent rink in south Vegas with nice ice and two full surfaces that I will find a hotel near the next time I have to go teach a class in Vegas.

How wow was it hot.

[lutefisk]

Never been to Vegas.  I get a little nervous if I'm more than a couple hundred miles inland from the sea.  My tv/motel benchmark is whether or not they have the weather channel.

[Query]

Never been to Vegas.  I get a little nervous if I'm more than a couple hundred miles inland from the sea.  My tv/motel benchmark is whether or not they have the weather channel.

I know you were joking, but it is close to Lake Mead and the Colorado River, where people frequently go boating. And I bet they have weather channels in the hotels, because there is a fair bit of temperature variation.

(BTW, did you know that when Lake Mead water levels change quickly, they sometimes get earthquakes? (A lot of big dams create quakes when water level change quickly, because the upstream reservoirs hold a huge mass of water.)

At least one of their swimming pools has a beach! Perhap's that's not the o.p.'s low rent hotel?

A lot of the world's best boating is on inland lakes and rivers. Flat water, whitewater, sailing, motorboating, fishing, etc.

Anyway, if the sea level keeps rising, the sea will come further inland, though I admit Las Vegas could stay dry.

[lutefisk]

I know you were joking, but it is close to Lake Mead and the Colorado River, where people frequently go boating. And I bet they have weather channels in the hotels, because there is a fair bit of temperature variation.

(BTW, did you know that when Lake Mead water levels change quickly, they sometimes get earthquakes? (A lot of big dams create quakes when water level change quickly, because the upstream reservoirs hold a huge mass of water.)

At least one of their swimming pools has a beach! Perhap's that's not the o.p.'s low rent hotel?

A lot of the world's best boating is on inland lakes and rivers. Flat water, whitewater, sailing, motorboating, fishing, etc.

Anyway, if the sea level keeps rising, the sea will come further inland, though I admit Las Vegas could stay dry.

That's all well and good, Query, but I still consider anything west of Beltsville to be Terra Incognita.

[Query]

Based on these links:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sobe+Ice+Arena/@36.2013238,-115.1961082,18z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x80c8c1f37b68d33f:0x69dbf56437ed7aae!8m2!3d36.2012719!4d-115.1947993

https://fiestarancho.sclv.com/Entertainment/SoBe-Ice-Arena

I assume we are talking about the SoBe Ice Arena, which is listed by Google Maps as inside the Fiesta Rancho hotel, right?

Why would anyone build an expensive looking indoor ice arena, with stands, like that, which almost certainly cost many millions of dollars to build (it was part of a $26,000,000 expansion of the casino/hotel) and operate (in such a warm climate), and not take care of the ice?

The rink is owned by the same people who own the local NHL hockey team. They should know and care about the ice.

Perhaps the rink itself loses money, or doesn't make nearly as much as the casino, but the casino/hotel hypes it as a major attraction, so they should care about it for that reason too.

It's such a shame that so many ice arenas are built with such large capital investments, yet are managed so poorly.

I wonder if the sessions you watched were atypical. Maybe at other times of day, they are better managed, or less busy. Maybe you are picky. I played rink guard for a while at a facility you've been to that included an outdoor surface. Rough ice isn't that much of a problem, if your blades are sharp enough - you cut right through the surface junk. Unless you get ruts that you can trip over.

So, AgnesNitt, what class did you teach?

Sounds like they need a course on ice rink management.

[skategeek]

Never been to Vegas.  I get a little nervous if I'm more than a couple hundred miles inland from the sea.  My tv/motel benchmark is whether or not they have the weather channel.

I'm fine with inland... even did field research in the Mojave (lots of lizards and tortoises, no mosquitos or poison ivy... paradise!).  You just have to follow the very important rule of never ordering seafood at a restaurant in the desert.  I failed to do that once at a very fancy French restaurant in Vegas, and paid the price.

[AgnesNitt]

Query: I don't know why the ice was so rough. Maybe they don't care about Public.

Also, rinks don't always cost millions to build. They're mostly empty space. Maybe a mill and a half?
 We had a local hockey team build a rink for $400K (after someone donated an empty lumber yard as a facility). 

[Bill_S]

I suspect that it's like buying a car - choose what extra options you want, then you get the tab. The Chiller ice rink system in Columbus is adding a third sheet to one of their facilities for $5 million. However it includes some extra amenities plus it will be architecturally-linked to the two existing sheets of ice. They are also very good-looking rinks, unlike my local Quonset-hut rink.

The Chiller North expansion will add one regulation National Hockey League rink, 200 x 85 feet, four public locker rooms with shower facilities, as well as two larger private locker rooms that can serve as home base for area high school or travel hockey teams. The additional sheet of ice will provide approximately 80 weekly hours for high demand programming at the facility.

Full story here... https://www.nhl.com/bluejackets/news/ohiohealth-chiller-ice-rinks-announce-expansion-plans-for-chiller-north/c-294988218

[Doubletoe]

The Pacific Coast Adult Sectional competition has been held at that rink several times in the past 10 years and the ice has been fine.  We also appreciated the rinkside margaritas!
I have zero expectation of any public session ever being decent at any rink anywhere.  That's one reason I only skate freestyle sessions!

[Query]

Also, rinks don't always cost millions to build. They're mostly empty space. Maybe a mill and a half?
 We had a local hockey team build a rink for $400K (after someone donated an empty lumber yard as a facility).

$400,000 is VERY cheap for an indoor rink. Even the Laurel, MD curling rink, which is much smaller than NHL size, and has low ceilings, together with the fluorescent lighting the low ceilings (and lack of hockey pucks) those ceilings made possible, and mostly isn't strong enough for ice skating, without its own bathrooms, cost about $1,000,000 to build, on top of the land lease cost, a number of years ago.

Describe the $400,000 ice rink. Indoor/outdoor, size, seating, borders, how finished...

Was the hockey team rink a full indoor NHL-size rink, with fancy seating for 1400 (not as much seating as many NHL arenas, but very nice looking), locker rooms, shower facilities, at least one party room, as SoBe advertises?

Also, look at the pictures:

  https://fiestarancho.sclv.com/Entertainment/SoBe-Ice-Arena (look at slide show)
  https://www.vegas.com/attractions/off-the-strip/ice-arena
  https://www.facebook.com/sobeicearena/
  https://fiestarancho.sclv.com/Entertainment/SoBe-Ice-Arena

Fancy Glassed in entrance and glassed areas on the bottom floor, seating on a second floor, big air handling ducts, high ceilings, arc lights.

Also - casinos like to make stuff look ritzy. I'm not sure that always means well made, but looking ritzy still costs money. So does meeting building codes for as many people as are on the hockey teams + 1400 spectators. It doesn't look like a lumber yard.

Finally, they are in Vegas, a desert climate, not Northern Virginia.

So I'm pretty sure SoBe was not $400,000.

(Though they show an Olympia ice surfacer, which I believe to be cheaper than a Zamboni.)

[FigureSpins]

The PSA held the US Open at the Sobe Ice Arena and the rink was clean and the ice looked great.  We came in the back entrance, so didn't have to walk through the smoky casino for very long.  The on-ice workshops were at the Las Vegas Ice Center, which was also very clean and the ice was good considering how many people were on the ice for the various workshops.  (They have two sheets of ice.)  They have a great Theater on Ice program that includes adults.

Smoking is everywhere in Vegas, which is a turnoff.  The skating conference was at the Planet Hollywood conference center, but we stayed at the Elara, a Hilton Grand Vacations club hotel because (a) it was cheaper than the conference center hotel, (b) had a great outdoor pool, and (c) was a no-smoking hotel.  Walking through the PH casino to reach the conference rooms was breath-taking, literally, lol.  Especially with the World Series of Poker going on right outside the conference center.  Gasp!

[lutefisk]

I haven't paid too much attention to workplace / public area smoking since smoking is banned pretty much everywhere in the states were I roam.  Some beach towns are even considering banning smoking on public beaches but enforcement might be boondoggle. 

The ban is so universal here that I guess I was assuming that this had become a Nation-wide ban.  Another reason to stay on the east coast!

[FigureSpins]

Smoking bans indoors are in effect all over the US, not just on the east coast. Vegas casinos have different restrictions than the restaurants and theaters.

I love to travel, sounds like you're just looking for excuses to stay home, lol.